Letter from the Editor, #744

This week I got to see exactly how easy it is for our patients to add extra calories and sugar to their daily routine. It seems that Labor Day is no longer a holiday worthy of a special section in the grocery store for holiday food. On August 14, grocery stores in our area declared that the Halloween season was upon us and the shelves needed to be filled with Kit Kats, M&M’s, and Almond Joy bars.

What is really interesting about this "phenomenon" is how people will just start snacking on the candy as soon as they get it home and will buy more before the holiday season. In fact, this week I worked in a pharmacy in a small town about 50 miles north of St. Petersburg and was talking to the manager about the Halloween season, and he said that sales of these candies were almost as high right now as the week before the holiday.

I also learned how the Facebook theory of marketing was invading the world of loyalty cards, and directing patients to sugary foods. We all have seen how ads seem to pop up on our Facebook page with the things we look at on Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist. This happens based on our searches and what sites we go to.

Now food stores are getting in on the act. When your grocer scans your loyalty card your purchases are recorded and then the next time you shop, coupons come out of the machine for you to use. One example of this I saw was when a customer got a coupon for $2.00 off Iced Coffee. Evidently this non-coffee drinker had purchased some hazelnut-flavored creamer to make a cheesecake and now they have been identified as a coffee lover.

It would be better if these coupons were for foods like pistachios which according to this week’s Item #9 can actually improve metabolic risk in diabetes and pre-diabetes. 

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Dave Joffe, Editor-in-chief